With continuous improvement in the processing capabilities of a smart data terminal, the number of application programs (APPs) which may be operated by a smart data terminal is continually increasing.
An application program may be a third party application program. An application platform system may be a platform system which is able to operate the third party application program. The application platform system may operate in a local terminal. Alternatively, the application platform system may operate on a network, for example on a server, and a user may log into the application platform system from a network enabled terminal. The terminal may connect to the application platform system via the internet. The user may operate the application program in the application platform system after logging into the application platform system.
The user may share the application program with another user in the application platform system. The application program may have a unique identification. The application platform system may send the unique identification of the shared application program to a second user, viz. a recipient of the shared application program, via a sharing channel of the application platform system. The sharing channel may be, for example, an instant communication system, a mail system, a short message system, a blog system, a microblog system, a web log system and a network space system based on the application platform system. The unique identification may be sent after receiving an instruction for sharing the application program. An application platform system of the recipient may find the shared application program by using the unique identification of the shared application program, and open and operate the shared application program. Thus, the application program may be shared with the second user in the application platform system.
Further, content played by the application program may be shared with the second user. The played content may be embedded into the application program to make up an application program containing the content. Such application programs may be referred to as a content application program, such as a video file application program, an audio file application program, and an e-book application program. A video player may be integrated into the video file application program to directly play the video content in the application program. An audio player may be integrated into the audio file application program to directly play the audio content in the application program. A reader may be integrated into the e-book application program to directly show contents in the e-book. If the user shares this kind of content application program in the application platform system, the content played by the application program may also be shared.
In addition, An access address of the played content of the application program may be shared with the second user via the sharing channel of the application platform system. The second user (i.e., the recipient) may select a corresponding application program to access the access address of the shared played content, thereby accomplishing the sharing of the played content.
However, the above examples have the following disadvantage. The recipient may only play all of the shared played content from beginning, such as play a video from beginning, play an audio from beginning, play an e-book from beginning, and not play the shared played content from a particular position. That is to say, when the recipient may play the shared played content, the recipient may not be able to position the playing position (for example, by a playing progress bar) of the played content when the sharer shares the played content.